10 Tips for Building Traffic Without Being Spammy

One of the biggest challenges of being a blogger and Community Manager is in bringing in traffic and raising awareness of various BlogTalkRadio shows without being seen as a spammer. No one wants to receive hundreds of pieces of email from the same organization, nor do they want to see the same links in their Twitter stream each time they log on.

Today, I’d love to share some tips for building traffic without being perceived as a spammer:

1. It’s all about relationships: One of my pet peeves about blogging is about the bloggers who only reach out to me when they want something from me. They don’t periodically check in and say hi or converse with me on Twitter. Instead they only reach out when they want something. Social media is all about relationships. It’s about making contacts and building those relationships and then turning those relationships into something more personal. Take time to make friends and build up relationships, and then if you’d like help with promotion, you’ll find folks are a little more willing.

2.Ask for permission: Instead of posting links in blog comments or forums, ask for permission. Email details to bloggers and forum administrators and ask them if it’s ok to post. This will serve a couple of purposes. First, this will put you in the administrators good graces because you didn’t spam with links. Second, you will be building up a relationship with the blogger or forum admin which will help with future promotions

3. Don’t bug the same people all the time: Outreach to bloggers and the media can have positive results. However, when you ask the same bloggers to promote your show week after week, it might wear out your welcome. Save your outreach for special occasions or reach out to a few different bloggers each week. The last thing you want is for the recipient of your emails to hit delete without opening.

4. Don’t send requests and invites every day: The best way to become a pest is to send invites and event requests every single day until the show airs. If the other parties are interested they’ll save the date. Just as you would do for your outreach, save it for special guests and occasions.

5. Look into cross promotion: A good way to get bloggers to talk about your show or other hosts to mention your show is to cross promote together. Offer on air plugs for whoever shows you the love.

6. Build community, not traffic: Encourage audience participation in the chat rooms, social networks and more. If listeners see your show as a community event rather than an online radio show, they’ll show up each week with bells on.

7. Become a part of other communities: By becoming an active participant in other discussion groups, you’re getting people interested in you. The more you share, the more people will want to learn more about you – and will even follow you to your shows, web pages, blogs and more.

8. There’s no competition, only opportunity: Don’t view your fellow hosts or bloggers as competition, there’s no such thing. Even the folks who do almost the same thing as you are not competition. They are colleagues, friends, and allies. Cross promote each others’ shows. Host contests together. Be guests on each others shows. Work together, not separate and watch your communities grow…together.

9. Don’t be pushy: Asking for promotion or Tweeting out a link once is cool. To do so over and over in an aggressive manner is pushy. People don’t like to deal with pushy talk show hosts. Ask, but don’t push.

10. Don’t forget to say thank you: Please remember the people who helped you. Don’t forget to drop a line to say thank you. No one forgets good manners.

Want to learn more about building traffic: Listen to these BlogTalkRadio shows: